Jasper!

A joyous welcome to Jasper Daniel Blachly-Nelson, born to LibraryThing's Librarian Abby (ablachly) and her wife Sara, yesterday at 8:56 PM—9 pounds 3 ounces, 21.5 inches long, 166 books!

Update: More photos on Flickr!

Update 2: Lisa and I visited Sara, Abby and Jasper at the hospital today. Everyone is doing great, and Jasper—cuter even than his picture—is clearly going to grow a weed.

Happy Holidays, from LibraryThing!

From all of us here at LibraryThing, we hope you have a wonderful set of holidays, whatever they may be.

Many thanks to all who participated in SantaThing, for bringing new books into a fellow LibraryThing member's home. The SantaThing page is open, so each participant can see who their Secret Santa was, and any suggestions.

Underwaterguy and I have just cracked our new books (thanks, Moomin_Mama and strongstuff). We plan on having a very reading day.

Note from Tim: Many thanks to Sonya and Abby (and Sara!) for doing 95% of the SantaThing work. The ordering was a little easier this year, but there were more Santas—over 370.

We're faster (but not resting)

Click image for details

Last Wednesday John brought live two new database servers, Alexander and Hannibal*.

Together, they more than doubled our database heft. Put another way, our servers, which were operating at near full capacity all day long, can finally rest a bit. They can do everything as fast as they're able, unencumbered by unsupportable amounts of work.

Performance. The effect on site performance has been positive. But problems remain. Profile pages are dramatically faster. Author, work, subject are faster and no longer slow down at peak times. Talk pages are essentially unchanged.

The catalog is faster. The page-generation averages now hover just over one second, not around two seconds. But I was hoping for more. The standard deviation of page-creation times remains high—people with huge libraries get hurt. Last night we I made a series of improvements which I hope will pay off. (The standard deviation is down, but will it stay down?)

The future. We will continue to improve. Until Wednesday the situation was desperate. When a box got behind, we had to turn off access to interior pages to all but signed-in members. That day is over, thank God**. And we can finally tease apart what was is itself slow, versus what was just slow because everything else was slowing it down. Lastly, John has long wanted to try out some low-level tweaks, but with no spare capacity, couldn't. I expect he will find ways to wring more out of what we have.

Whether he can or not, we are going to keep improving. We have laid aside the money to buy a number of other servers—up to ten, if needed. One or two will be database servers, probably removing administration and caching traffic from the live servers. A number will be memory machines—low-end boxes with tiny disk drives and obscene amounts of RAM. They'll help us use memory caching more effectively, reducing database load. The balance will be tasked in other ways—supporting LibraryThing for Libraries, serving secondary resources (covers, APIs, widgets) and providing redundancy, so we won't be skating along a cliff anymore.

Thanks to John for getting the new servers racked and running. Thanks to the members for hanging in with us as we grow, and grew and grew!

---

*Yes, I named them. Cliche, I know. But Alexander was my research interest in grad school, so I'm allowed! Anyway, at least they're consistent, and set a pattern we can follow (next up, Mithridates and Shapur). I'm still bothered that a previous sysadmin named our twin MyISAM databases Apollo and Athena, not Apollo and Artemis (who were twins). Then there's Plato and his bigger twin Mongo, which makes no sense, but feels right, and the one everyone hates, our backup machine, Mnemosyne.
** John adds "the upgrade has given our database servers more horsepower rather than more raw speed. While the new servers are faster, the biggest initial gain is in the amount of load we can take on without starting to slow down."

Buon Natale a tutti gli italiani su LibraryThing...

... e a quelli che presto si uniranno a noi ;-)

Abbiamo appena riattivato la possibilità di catalogare libri italiani via DEAstore ( ci scusiamo per il probelma ma DEA stave lanciando una nuova versione del sito con diverse nuove tecnologie). Se non avete ancora aggiunto il DEAstore alle vostre fonti di catalogazione, potete farlo scegliendolo tra le fonti italiane.

Se avete già fatto tutti i regali e avete catalogato già tutti i vostri libri, allora vi consiglio un bell'articolo su LibraryThing pubblicato su ApogeOnline da Eleonora.

Buona catalogazione e buone feste a tutti voi!

... and happy holidays to all the other thingambrarians in the world too!

December Early Reviewer bonus batch

As a special holiday treat, we've got an Early Reviewers "bonus batch" for you. Unlike most bonus batches, this only includes one book, *and* it is running at the same time as the regular December batch. What that means for you is that you could potentially win two books this month, since the bonus batch 'winners' are picked separately.

The book: Random House's new Modern Library edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. It's a new complete and unabridged translation by Burton Raffel with an introduction by John Miles Foley.

NPR's “Weekend All Things Considered” did an interview with the translator, Burton Raffel, a few weeks ago, The Art of Translation, if you're interested.

Only fifteen copies are available, and only to residents of the US.

Go request it if you're interested! You have until the end of the month.

SantaThing Sign Up Extended

UPDATE: SantaThing Santas have been picked! Go to SantaThing to find out who you're giving books to!
PLEASE NOTE: You only have until Friday (the 19th) at 10pm Eastern Standard Time (3am GMT) to pick gifts.


Although we were going to end sign-up for SantaThing at noon today (aka, now), we've decided to extend it for a few hours. So you now have until 4pm Eastern today to sign up for SantaThing!

We already have over 300 members signed up to participate, and tons of helpful suggestions posted! If you don't want to be a Santa yourself, you can always help out by looking at the list of Santas and posting book suggestions.

To sign up, just go here and click "become a Secret Santa".

Tonight we'll match up Santas to Santa-ees(?) and we'll let you know by the morning who you've been assigned to pick out books for. Stay tuned...

SantaThing: LibraryThing's Secret Santa

Back by popular demand, I hereby announce LibraryThing's second annual SantaThing!

SantaThing is Secret Santa for LibraryThing members.

The idea is simple. Pay $25. You play Santa to a random LibraryThing member, and find them up $20 worth of books, based on their library or a short description. Someone else does the same to you. LibraryThing orders the books and pays the shipping, so no addresses are exchanged and no members are stalked!

Now, this doesn't have to be just for you. You can also go in for someone you know—a relative or a friend. Describe their library a bit and someone will find them the perfect present. And you can become a Santa as many times as you like.

Lastly, even if you don't want to be a Santa, you can help by suggesting books for others.

Crucial dates. This is going to end very soon.

• Monday, December 15th at 12 Noon Eastern. Santa-signup ends. Shortly thereafter, we will tell you who you are matched up with. Then you go crazy trying to find the perfect books to give them.
• Friday, December 19th at 10pm Eastern. Submit gifts to LibraryThing. LibraryThing buys everything.

Go sign up to become a Secret Santa now!

Questions? Ask them in this Talk topic. Unfortunately, for various reasons, this is only open to people with addresses in the US, Canada, or Britain.

December Early Reviewer Books

The December batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 71 books this month, and a grand total 1,445 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is the end of the month— December 31st at 6pm EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to US, Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, and Israel. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Andrews McMeel Publishing	Authentic	Avon Books
Ballantine Books	Bantam	Beacon Press
BelleBooks	Bethany House	Canongate Books
Center Street	Delacorte Press	Excelsior Editions (SUNY Press)
Grand Central Publishing	Hachette Book Group	HarperCollins
Henry Holt and Company	Knopf	Little, Brown and Company
Open Letter	Our Sunday Visitor	Picador
Spiegel & Grau	Springboard Press	St. Martin's Minotaur
St. Martin's Press	Steerforth Press	The Friday Project
The History Press	The Permanent Press	Tor Books
Tyndale House Publishers	UnT2	Vertical
W.W. Norton	Wattle and Daub Books

Common Knowledge: Names, Relationships and Events

Chris and I have introduced four new Common Knowledge fields, for authors and works.

Author Names. LibraryThing's author system is personally libertarian and globally democratic. You can change your own author names to your heart's delight. On the global level author names are combined and separated by members, with the most common name ending up on top.

That system has two main problems. First, Library has no good method for separatin out homonymous authors. (It's a big problem; it's on our list.) And most-common logic has its limitations, particularly in picking the best name for an author and in laying out what the many variants mean.

To improve things we've added a number of optional name fields. "Canonical name" was already there, as a foolproof way to set the "most common" form. To this we've added "Legal name" and "Other names."

"Legal Name" is provided for users who want to record the most accurate, most fiddly form of a name, eg., "George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron." It can hold multiple names, to capture given names, and so forth.* "Other names" is for pen names, aliases, stage names, etc.

Two examples should illustrate the differences nicely:

Canonical Name:	Twain, Mark
Legal Name:	Clemens, Samuel Langhorne
Other Names:	Snodgrass, Quintus Curtius

Canonical Name:	Rice, Anne
Legal Name:	Rice, Howard Allan Frances O’Brien O'Brien, Howard Allen (given)
Other Names:	Rampling, Anne Roquelaure, A. N.

Relationships. We've also added a "Relationships" field, intended to capture when an author's spouse, son or other relative is also an author (eg., Martin Amis). So far at least, it's only intended to capture author-to-author relations, creating author-page links. LibraryThing can't be a all-out genealogy site!*

The result can be rather fun. Starting from Isabel Fonseca, author of Attachment you can now go to well-known British novelist Martin Amis, to his well-known father Kingsley Amis, to his second wife, the British novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, to her first huband Peter Scott, a popular naturalist whose father was Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic) and godfather Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie, great grandfather of Kevin Bacon (not true).

Events. We've also added an "Important Events" field to works. "Important Events" now follows "Persons" and "Important Places." It was designed for events like the Great Fire of London, World War II or the 2000 Election.

As with Important Places, it is useful to agree on terms. CK's autocomplete function helps there. When in doubt, however, I'd go with the Wikipedia form for both fields.

---

*Porn names not allowed.
**I'm not so sure about "friend" relationships, although that's currently allowed. I found it difficult enough to reach an end from Isabel Fonseca. With friends, I don't think I could have ever stopped.

The First Ever Catalog Flash-Mob

The mob.

On Saturday, we descended on St. John's Church in Beverly MA, in a "flash mob" of cataloging fools!*

Check out Sonya's pictures, Elizabeth Thomsen's pictures and her blog post.

Turnout was much more than we expected--twenty people!** With so many hands--and despite some wifi problems--we got an enormous amount done. By lunch time we were flying, and after powering through the actual job, the 1,363 items in the church library (member StJohnsBeverlyFarms), we went ahead and tackled the rector's 734 books too (member: TadsLibrary***). I have a mind to go back and start in on all the parishioners' libraries, particularly that of a local author of some renown.

Cataloging went quickly for some books--everyone got a CueCat barcode scanner. Others took more work. A troupe of Simmons students tackled the church's motley collection of VHS tapes, mostly by hand, including lots of special comments. Katya0133, cataloger, friend of Sonya's and Legacy Library superstar, took some of the toughest stuff, including original cataloging. A handful of items were so rare they hadn't made it into WorldCat. (We're happy to part with them, for a million dollars!.)

It was an amazing day; everyone was helpful, friendly, and amped to be there. We left feeling weary, satisfied, and despite the Episcopal coloring, vaguely Amish.

So, let's do it again! Why not do it somewhere else? New York? California? We could time it with a big book show or a library conference.**** Jeremy is also very open to blending flash-mob cataloging with the Legacy Library project, by collecting to do a house museum or an important collection in a historical society.

---

*The Wikipedia definition of a flash mob is "A group of people who converge on a spot at a specific time, perform some action, and disperse quickly."
**How many world libraries have twenty catalogers?
***Who still doesn't have a profile picture, Amy!
****Just imagine, 500 librarians from the ALA show descending upon every church, synagogue, house museum and lean-to library in Denver.

This Saturday: Flash-Mob Cataloging Party

Book geeks! We need you! Come, take up arms cuecats and help!

We're having a "flash-mob" cataloging party November 15th, Saturday, in Beverly, MA (just north of Boston). We'll descend on St. John's Episcopal Church, catalog their 1,200-odd books, eat some pizza, talk some talk and leave them with a gleaming new LibraryThing catalog. Books, bibliophiles, conversation, barcode scanners, pizza! (Not to mention Mike, Sonya, Tim, and probably Abby.)

Details: Join us..
* The day: Saturday, November 15th.
* The time: TBD, probably starting at 10:00 or 11:00, but come whenever.
* The place: St. John's Episcopal Church in Beverly Farms, MA (Google map)

See the LibraryThing Local page.


Read the initial blog post.

There's a discussion on the Bostonians group. I'm sure we can figure out how to get even car-less people there. The commuter rail gets you very close to the church.

Come on: Pizza. Laptops. CueCats. Take pictures. Leave after a day's work with a LibraryThing catalog in place. Do good. Have fun.

Just email Sonya @ librarything.com for details/to RSVP.

November Early Reviewer Books

The November batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 60 books this month, and a grand total 1,645 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Sunday, November 30th at 6pm EST.

Eligiblity:

Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

ABA Publishing	Algonquin Books	Ballantine Books
Beacon Press	Bethany House	Bloomberg Press
Center Street	Classical Comics	Del Rey
Delacorte Press	Delta	DK Publishing
Faber and Faber	Hachette Book Group	Harper
Henry Holt and Company	Hunter House	Knopf Canada
Laughing Gull Press	Little, Brown and Company	Lost Hills Books
Loving Healing Press	McClelland & Stewart	Modern History Press
New York Review Books	Newmarket Press	North Atlantic Books
Orca Book Publishers	Other Press	Picador
Random House	Springboard Press	St. Martin's Griffin
St. Martin's Press	Swank Books	The Overlook Press
The Permanent Press	Trumpeter Books	Viking Books
W.W. Norton	Wizards of the Coast

Flash-Mob Cataloging Party

We're having a "flash-mob" cataloging party November 15th, Saturday, in Beverly, MA (just north of Boston). We'll descend on St. John's Episcopal Church, catalog their 1,200-odd books, eat some pizza, talk some talk and leave them with a gleaming new LibraryThing catalog. Books, bibliophiles, conversation, barcode scanners, pizza! (Not to mention Mike, Sonya, Tim, maybe Abby, with a slight chance of Liam.)

Why: Quite a few small libraries use LibraryThing as their catalog—schools, churches, synagogues, Masonic temples, companies, museums, and even a couple of embassies! They find LibraryThing much cheaper and easier to use than most "library automation" software. (More about organizations using LibraryThing here.)

But it's not always easy for a single overworked volunteer to catalog a big collection. So we thought we'd try a "flash-mob" cataloging party and see how fast we can enter an entire library into LibraryThing. A bunch of us will be there with laptops and barcode scanners in hand—and we're inviting anyone in the area to join us.

Details: Join us..

• The day: Saturday, November 15th.
• The time: TBD, probably starting at 10:00 or 11:00, but come whenever.
• The place: St. John's Episcopal Church in Beverly Farms, MA (Google map)

Talk? Ride? I've started a discussion on the Bostonians group. I'm sure we can figure out how to get even car-less people there.

Come on: Pizza. Laptops. CueCats. Take pictures. Leave after a day's work with a LibraryThing catalog in place. Do good. Have fun.

Just email Abby for details/to RSVP.

Early Reviewers October Bonus Batch

This month we're trying something new with our Early Reviewers bonus batch. Sourcebooks is offering up 2,500 "copies" of In the Land of Invisible Women as an electronic download. The first 2,500 people will be able to download a copy to read and review.

Read a description of the memoir on the Early Reviewers list page:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

And then you don't even have to bother clicking "request it!" Just click here to download your copy.

You have until Friday October 31st to download a copy.

The author, Dr. Qanta Ahmed will be on LibraryThing doing an Author Chat from November 10-21. Read it now, and save your questions for her!